Film: Profound Desires Of The Gods
Release date: 21st June 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 173 mins
Director: Shohei Imamura
Starring: Rentaro Mikuni, Choichiro Kawarazaki, Kazuo Kitamura, Hideko Okiyama
Genre: Drama
Studio: Eureka
Format: Blu-ray
Country: Japan
A huge commercial failure upon its original 1968 release, Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desires Of The Gods has since risen in stature to become one of the most legendary, albeit least seen films of the Japanese New Wave.
The film depicts the traditional society that exists on the fictional island of Kurage, its islanders caught between faith in their traditional gods and the promises of modernity. Central to the story are the Futori, the oldest and most primitive family on Kurage. Maligned as beasts by the other islanders for their incestuous habits, the Futori clan includes the unfortunate Nekichi, who spends his days chained up in a pit that he is digging to appease the gods after violating local customs.
When the engineer Kariya arrives from Tokyo, tasked with building a well to get fresh water for a new sugar cane family, he quickly becomes frustrated by the environment and the islanders’ superstitions. Soon, this emissary of rationalism and progress falls for the feral, nymphomaniac Futori daughter, Toriko. After briefly embracing his inner savage during some of the film’s more paradisal moments, it is not long before the forces of civilization and capitalism reassert their claims on the mainlander. Eventually, the island opens up to those forces of progress that will spell the end for the Futori way of life…
Opening with a dazzling burst of sunlight that seems to suggest a pre-civilization dawning itself, the film introduces itself through a series of shots of the animal and marine life of Kurage (a water-snake, a sea cucumber, an extreme close-up of a blowfish’s disturbingly human-like face), before a man abruptly appears on screen to tear an octopus from its grip on a shoreline rock. Similar images abound throughout the film, as Imamura attempts to strip any distinctions between the human inhabitants of the island and their animal or plant counterparts, breaking down the divisions of natural/unnatural or, as Imamura has stated, regular/irregular. It is a world in which both animal and human receive the same treatment, and the same sympathy. Early on in the film, a pig goes overboard into the ocean and is quickly devoured by a shark, foreshadowing a similar fate suffered by one of the main characters. One of the film’s most extraordinary shots features two characters having sex as the camera adopts a God’s point-of-view through an overhead lightshade in which a number of lizards scurry - predominance given to neither human nor reptile.
Providing Profound Desires With The Gods with its dramatic drive, and a key to understanding the film, is its opposition of conflicting narratives: that of the Westernised humanist notion of civilization as a process of continual progression (represented by Tokyo and the images of Coca-Cola strewn around the film’s finale) against the more primal traditional narrative embodied in the myths and rituals of the islanders. Imamura stated that he did not believe the basic human qualities of society has ever changed, and this sheds light on the film’s focus on the primitive as a means of getting to some essential truth. It is clear that Kurage is intended to represent an older pre-civilized Japan, one still in touch with its own creation myths in which the islands were created from discarded objects thrown by incestuous brother and sister gods.
Forming a parallel with the mythological origins of the island are the confused interrelationships of the Futori clan. Nekichi’s punishment stems partly from insinuations of incest with his sister Uma. Further intimations of incest spread across the entire family, from the patriarch Yamamori down to Nekichi’s inbred daughter Toriko.
It is the Futori’s who embody most the wild, ritualistic society of Kurage, with beliefs that seem initially little more than the product of ignorant and superstitious minds. It is in keeping with the film’s own internal (il)logic (its desire to break the divisions between the regular and irregular) that, as the film progresses, these beliefs are presented as not entirely baseless. When Toriko is revealed as a true noro (shaman) with visionary powers, conjuring a spirit to appear in the sky, the film expresses a deeper reality that transcends the rational.
While fairly even-handed in portraying the distasteful aspects of both the atavistic and the civilised, it becomes clear that Imamura favours the Futoris for a certain pureness they possess. Certainly more sympathy is allocated to them than is shown to the tourists who invade the island towards the film’s close, with their ignorance of Kurage’s history and meaning. The refusal of the Futoris to go along with the given narrative about the island and its future is shown as admirable. Imamura does not even wholly condemn their incest, suggesting it almost as a source of strength: the brother-sister relationships are ultimately redeeming (Toriko is stronger than the engineer who allows himself to be shipped back to Tokyo while she sits on the beach turning into rock).
Imamura has expressed the opinion that non-Japanese audiences may not fully understand his films. While at times confusing, the film does not, however, feel like an overly intellectual exercise. Instead it is more visceral, with an expressionistic, almost hallucinatory style that locates the viewer directly within its potent mix of sun and sweat.
The performances by the cast also contribute an emotional pull. It seems unfair to single out one actor in a film full of excellent performances (even more astonishing for their largely improvised nature), but Hideko Okiyama is particularly impressive in the difficult role of the child-like yet extremely sexual Toriko. The scene in which she channels the dead spirits of the island is especially memorable - her portrayal of the frenzied state of the possessed positively terrifying in its believability.
For a filmmaker so studiously disinterested in aesthetics, Profound Desires Of The Gods is also very beautiful. It came as a surprise to learn this was Imamura’s first colour film, combining incredible vibrancy with an expertly handled use of natural light to produce some of the most resplendent images seen in world cinema. The beauty of its cinematography for once justifies the decision to release it solely on the Blu-ray format, though it is regrettable that this may lead to many missing out on a wonderful film that really deserves to be seen.
An allegory of Japan’s own killing of its traditional gods, a poetic rendering of those atavistic callings that can never be fully subjugated by the forces of civilization, Profound Desires Of The Gods is visionary cinema at its very finest. An astonishing achievement. GJK
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